


The Hunger Games - Till Death Do Us Part

by breadboy_98



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26086690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breadboy_98/pseuds/breadboy_98
Summary: Follow Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark's daughter, Willow, as she navigates teenhood.Living in District 12 is all Willow has ever known, with her parents and her younger brother. She helps her father run the bakery and hunts with her mother in the woods. Until one day when a new face arrives in town, one she can't help but fall in love with. Who is this mysterious new girl? And what brings her to District 12?
Relationships: Haymitch Abernathy/Effie Trinket, Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	1. The Bakery

CHAPTER 1 – THE BAKERY 

I can still feel warmth radiating from the loaf of bread as I pick it up and take it over to the counter to be wrapped up for the customer. The smell of it wafts into my nostrils as I place it down again. The customer, a tall slender woman who I feel impelled to call a lady because of her regal appearance, slightly lowers her head to take in a whiff herself. 

I don’t know this woman. I’ve never seen her before, something that isn’t unheard of but is definitely uncommon here in twelve. After the fall of Panem people were able to travel freely, an opportunity the citizens had never been given before and so tourism was at a great high. Almost everyone made an effort to visit other districts, to learn about a world they had never been able to indulge themselves in. 

One of my earliest memories is of the day we learned about this in school. I was so intrigued by the thought of travelling that in the evening when I sat around the dinner table with my parents and my little brother, still too small to sit in his own chair, I asked them in a childish whiny voice why we had never left twelve. After my father’s several attempts to politely explain to me that we had everything we needed here making travelling to other districts simply a waste of resources my mother broke out of the daze she was in and snapped rather matter-of-factly that they had seen quite enough of Panem as teenagers. Being only small this didn’t stop me from questioning them for the rest of the evening, I didn’t think much of it until I heard my mother crying in the bathroom and my father’s soothing voice reassuring her that they did the right thing. I didn’t understand it all then, but I know now that it was the first time my parents had ever talked to me about the Games. I was the first time I really saw the effect they had had. 

“That will be all thank you!” the lady prompts me to pull myself out of my head and back into the bakery. 

“Oh yes, of course” I consider not starting a conversation with the extravagant customer but my curiosity gets the best of me, “From your accent I’d say you’re just visiting twelve?”

“Oh I’m from the City, honey!” her response is soaked in pride if not a dash of superiority. 

“You mean the Capitol?” I wrap up the loaf in the paper on the desk while she fusses with her purse. I’ve never met someone from the Capitol before but from the way my parents have always spoken about them, I’ve never wanted to. It’s not that my parents describe them as monsters, those kind of insults are reserved for the likes of President Snow and the Gamemakers, but they always gave the impression that they should’ve known better than to take such joy in the Games. 

“I haven’t heard anyone call it that for years! Is that what they say in these parts?” The woman’s toothy smile would have you believe she was trying to be friendly but something about the way she keeps her arms in close to her body as if even the air is beneath her and shouldn’t be touched makes me realise the motivation behind her trip to twelve. 

Even after the war, when a new government was created and with it a new world, Capitol residents mostly stayed where they had always lived. Some moved to the districts seeking a more rural life but for people who had only ever known luxury they felt it was too much of a jump to move from the only place they’d ever known. While this was true, it was also true that they were somewhat scared of the districts and its people. They’d always seen them as animals and it didn’t take long for the horrors of the war to wear off and their fear of the poor to rise once again. 

Suddenly I felt very protective over my father’s bakery, especially the loaf of fresh bread that I was now supposed to hand to this Capitol woman. Her eyes flicked between me and the bread, her exaggerative smile never faltering. I stand motionless trying to think of some way to get her out of the bakery without her precious souvenir that I’m sure she’ll mock to her Capitol friends as soon as she gets her hands on a telephone. My hand is just beginning to move towards the glass of water only inches from the bread, could I pull off being the clumsy shop worker well enough to convince her it was an accident? The back of my hand is almost touching the glass when the bell above the door rings and I hear my mother’s voice. 

“Willow! You need to start coming hunting with me again sweetie I’m not built like I used to be.” 

My scheme to sabotage the bread dissolves immediately and I give my head a little shake before apologising and handing the bread over to the Capitol woman. She drops her money into the palm of my hand, the effort she goes to not to touch me is not lost on me and I regret abandoning my plan.  
The woman turns and thanks to my mother who is now admiring todays cakes in the window. My mother’s face goes from one of delight to something much more like disgust as they make eye contact. Her body stiffens up, immediately losing the freedom that a hunt normally brings to her. 

“What a lovely little bakery you have here!”

My mother gives a nod of thanks as she watches the woman leave. Even when the door swings closed and the bell falls silent she doesn’t break her gaze on the Capitol woman until she disappears into another shop across the square. She turns to me suddenly and her eyes dart around me quickly before they land on the glass of water my hand has migrated back to unconsciously. She smirks. 

“You should’ve done it. I would have.” She walks over to the desk and leans over to tuck my hair behind my ear. Ever since I was little she’s told me that she knows me like the back of her hand and my father always agrees. 

“I thought it would be better to keep the bakery’s good reputation,” I begin to sort the cash into the register, “…and I wasn’t entirely sure I could pull it off without her noticing. Maybe if I’d figured out who she was a bit quicker...”

“I would say you’ll know for next time but hopefully there won’t be one. Capitol people don’t come here often.” She turns back to look out the big shop window that look out onto the square, “Only when they want to feel like some kind of do-gooder.” The resentment in her voice makes my blood run cold. 

Learning about what happened to my parents in the Games and the war was bad enough but the nightmarish damage it all left behind is worse. They turn up in the most unexpected of places. The flowers that grow by the forest. The smell of a perfume that is just a bit too strong. The flames that crackle in the fireplace during winter. Sometimes, on really bad days, even the song of a mockingjay is too much. 

“She said they call it the City now, not the Capitol.” I approach the conversation tenderly with the knowledge that this could be a bad day.

“Yeah, I guess they thought changing the name slightly made the whole thing more…digestible.” She wanders back over to the cakes, she loves to see what my father has created. Ever since I can remember he’s always brought one home for her when he closes the bakery. He knows how much she loves them, how much she dreamed of them as a child. My parents tell me that my aunt Prim loved them as much as my mother does, probably even more. She loved beautiful things, like the mockingjay pin that lives securely on my hunting jacket. 

My mother plucks a small cupcake from a selection in the window, the icing a perfect swirl of green icing, “Peeta!” she calls, turning towards the door behind me that leads to the kitchen.

“Mom, he’s not here. The owners from the furniture store came over and asked if he’d help them move some stuff.” I gesture lazily in the general direction of the store in question.

“Oh. Right. I’ll see him later then, I have a turkey to pluck!” She waves me goodbye as she makes her way out of the shop clearly very excited about her successful morning hunt. 

My father returns to the bakery eventually joking about how he’s getting too old to still be thought of as the strong young man everyone in 12 once knew him as. We bake bread and muffins and cheese buns, although they’re put to one side to be taken home to my mother, we decorate cakes with all sorts of brightly coloured icing and edible flowers my mother finds in the woods. Just before sunset we close up the shop and head home. Often, my father will walk just one or two steps behind me. One time, when my curiosity got the better of me I asked him and when we reached the house he pulled out a book only slightly bigger than the palm of his hand and took me to look through it. As I turned the pages each one was decorated with a sketch, all of them clearly drawn quickly but without looking rushed. Instead their speedy creation left them packed full of feeling, passion, love, contentment. Each was a moment from his day, some of them were of my mother either out in the woods or preparing a meal, sometimes they were just a close up of my face as if the sketch really was a very small moment frozen in time. Some were of Rye either trying to hunt or fish or bake or paint, try being the operative word yet my father managed to capture Rye’s determination and commitment rather than his failure. I could see his pride in his son with every stroke of his pencil. And then there were the ones of me, almost all of them on our walks home from the bakery. Always capturing the setting sun. They were truly like seeing through his eyes. 

It was the next day that him and my mother sat me and Rye down and really told us what the Capitol did to my father during the war. How they brainwashed him. Hijacked him. Turned him against everyone who loved him, even my mother. Something that I can’t even imagine for a second.  
They had always tried to tell us in ways that wouldn’t scare us as children but they were also given the luxury as parents to be able to shelter us from the really scary stuff. Something their parents were not given and consequently that they suffered for. I can’t blame them for using it.  
After they told us I didn’t really know how to respond, I felt a rage inside me but didn’t know where to direct it. Anyone who ever hurt my parents was dead and buried. Good riddance. So, I decided to take up their offer of asking them anything we wanted and while me and my father baked in silence one day in the shop I asked,

“Why did you start making those drawings? The ones in the little book you showed me. Is it because of what happened?” I didn’t take my eyes off the dough in my hands too afraid I would cry if I met his gaze. 

“I started because I was so desperate to capture every little thing, I didn’t want anyone to ever be able to turn me against my family again…but after a while, when that paranoia faded, I just started doing it for me. So I can always look back at my most favourite moments with my most favourite people.” He gently cups my chin in his hand and turns my face towards him. The corners of his face turn upwards creating a soft smile that always makes me feel safe. I search his eyes for the sadness that I’m sure must be there as he talks about the past but I find none. I let a tear escape and finally drop the dough and let him pull me into a hug, the ones that make me feel like a small child again. 

“We’re all safe now, hunny. I promise.” He strokes my head, running his fingers ever so gently through my hair like he did when I was little to soothe me. He only lets go when he hears the bell on the shop door ring to tell us a customer is here. I carry on working the dough on the table and swallow all the rage I’d let build up inside me knowing my father doesn’t hold an ounce in his heart because like I said, all the people who hurt my parents are dead and buried. A smile creeps across my face at the thought.


	2. The Lake

CHAPTER 2 – THE LAKE

I splash my feet around in the water letting its coolness draw the heat from my skin. It’s hot. Far too hot to stay in 12 where any relief from the heat is impossible so we take refuge at the lake. We’ve been coming here my whole life, my mother tells us stories about how when she was a child she’d come here with her father, my grandfather. We only have one photograph of him but the way my mother talks about him makes the lake feel like a special place, like a place to honour him, and it makes my mother so happy to see us playing and laughing in a place where she made her best childhood memories. 

My mother guts and prepares the fresh fish she’s caught and my father cooks it on the fire in the lake hut while Rye tries to beat his personal best on how long he can hold his breath underwater. I sit on the edge of the lake and watch his head bob up and down until and swims over muttering about trying again later. 

After filling our bellies full of fish we go on the hunt for berries, an activity my parents have always been reluctant about. But, after an incident where Rye almost ate a poisonous berry as a small child, which then sent my mother into hysterics and scared both me and Rye half to death, she decided the smart thing to do was to teach us what we could and couldn’t eat. She is still very strict that we have to return the berries to her for review before we can eat them but it’s better than not being able to eat them at all. This is another strange part of our lives that I’m sure was caused by the war or the Games but I haven’t quite mustered the courage to ask about yet, and that neither of my parents have offered to talk about. 

I can still hear my mother’s screams as she ripped the berries from Rye’s tiny pudgy hands and threw them into the trees. The way she gasped for air like she was underwater, scratching at her ears screaming about not wanting to hear the canon. My father helplessly telling her over and over that she was safe, trying to reach her. Rye started to cry too, he could only just walk and was easily startled by loud noises still being such a baby. He stumbled over to my father clutching to his arm wanting to be held. I just stood about a meter away from it all frozen to the spot. 

I didn’t really understand what I was feeling back then, but I think I do now. It felt like my heart was being torn to shreds, to see my mother in such pain, to be able to see objectively that it was her but not recognise the woman in front of me. She was like a baby bird that I’d only ever seen in its nest, safe and happy and content. But now she’d fallen onto the woodland floor and was screeching for someone to help her. And I couldn’t do a thing. 

I knew that me and my father were sharing this feeling when he looked over at me and saw me frozen. My father, who always knows how to make me feel safe, just looked at me with an expression like a lost little boy. He turned quickly back to my mother offering her words of comfort, seeming convincingly stable right after accidentally revealing his true feelings to me just moments before. 

The whole thing was over within a few minutes despite it feeling like an eternity. My father sat with my mother and fed her sips of tea he’d made out of hot water and some leaves from the woods. Rye was being distracted by some old wooden toy my father had found in the lake hut and was giggling to himself as if the whole thing had never even happened. I’d never been so jealous of him, of his infant brain that only cried because he didn’t like the sudden loud noises. Who wouldn’t remember this all by tomorrow. As for me, my five year old brain was still underdeveloped but it clung to every inch of that moment like moth to a flame. Engraining it into my mind and not hesitating to take me back there without notice. 

“Hey, Willow!” I turn away from the berry bush I’m plucking towards Rye only a few meters away at a different bush, “Open up!” he throws the berry in my direction and I catch it in my mouth at the last minute. My teeth are just about to close down around it when my mother appears.

“Spit that out.” She doesn’t raise her voice which could be understood as calmness to the untrained eye but flashes of the reaction to the first berry Rye ever picked play across my mind and I hear the terror in the undertones of her voice. I spit it onto the ground knowing she won’t even care to check if it was poisonous or not. There’s not many rules she’s strict about but this is one, we pick the berries, take them to her to check, then we can eat them. 

She joins me silently at my berry bush and picks them at a controlled speed I still haven’t mastered. I can’t help but see that shrieking baby bird that’s fallen from its nest as I watch her examine the berries before dropping them into the basket at our feet. 

Once we have more than enough we go back to find my father surrounded by katniss plants, my mother giggles and crouches down next to him and begins to stack them in the empty basket. It’s like they’re sharing a private joke even though the joke is very obvious to us all, my mother showing us how to find katniss plants is one of my earliest memories at the lake. It’s something I’ve always admired about my parents, their ability to share a private moment in public. I guess it’s something they had to get good at with how their relationship started in front of all of Panem. 

I’ve never seen the videos of the Games or the propos of the war, Rye and I learned about it all through stories. Some of the more gritty stuff I learned from uncle Haymitch against my parents’ wishes. I used to help him tend to his geese in the winter and after we’d go to his house and drink hot cocoa. After a while, and a few tenderly asked questions about my parents past, he started to take the time to reminisce and give me the information I craved. I could tell that he was almost always still holding back, I never got the full story but I think I’m grateful for it. Even what he did tell me would play on my mind for weeks to come, I’d find myself looking at my parents differently. 

One time, after Uncle Haymitch told me about how unbelievably ill my mother had been after the Quarter Quell, when they first arrived in District 13, I started seeing the baby bird in her even more. She started to look like she was made of glass to me and if she moved the wrong way she’d shatter. 

On a particularly cold winter night when I couldn’t sleep from the howling wind I crept downstairs trying not to wake anyone with the intention of boiling some hot water to drink in an attempt to warm myself from the inside. Only when I reached the bottom of the staircase I noticed that the fire in the lounge was still lit, something my parents would never do, they’re very cautious of fire. As I quietly peered into the room, leaning on my tip toes so as not to move off of the bottom step, I saw that they hadn’t left the fire burning unattended. Instead, they were quietly slow dancing to nothing but the sounds of their own footsteps muffled by fuzzy socks. My mother’s head curled into my father’s shoulder, her eyes closed peacefully and the warmest smile on her lips. My father placed a kiss on the top of her head and I watched her smile widen before she lifted her head up and whispered something to him. I was too far away to hear it but they both giggled and I found myself wondering how my mother could be the same person as the one in Uncle Haymitch’s stories. 

I never got my hot water, I just turned and crept back up to my bed with the image of my parents so happy playing on repeat in my mind. I would think of it every time some new horrific revelation about my parents past came to light, a reminder that they were safe and happy and that everything that happened didn’t destroy them. A reminder that if I ever had the chance to make it all up to them - their sacrifice of their lives that could’ve been and of their loved ones - I would do it in a heartbeat. 

After the sun begins to set, when the heat is much more manageable, we take the long hike back to twelve. I can feel the air getting thicker as we get closer to home. We pass through the meadow that me and Rye played in as children and my father plucks a dandelion from the ground and tucks it behind my mother’s ear, I’ve never seen him pass a dandelion without picking it for her. 

On the route back to our house, we pass the train station and I notice that as well as food supplies from other districts there are some people getting off the train. I roll my eyes, more Capitol do-gooders wanting a tour of twelve so they can tell all their friends about it when they get home. I try not to look but my anger gets the better of me and I glare over at them. This is when I notice that they’re not Capitol citizens at all, instead, they look more like they come from one of the districts close by. I can tell this mostly by the way they dress, they’re not in some ridiculous outfit (apparently the outfits used to be even worse before the war, unfortunately the weird fashion in the Capitol didn’t completely die out) but I can also tell from the way they carry themselves. It’s two women, one about the same age as my mother and one about the same age as me. Both with stunning golden hair that shimmers almost white in the evening sunlight. They don’t appear to be looking around as if visiting some kind of zoo, like the Capitol citizens always do, they look as if they’re at home. They fit right in. If I didn’t know everyone in twelve so well I wouldn’t even know they didn’t live here. Although judging by the several large bags they have with them, slung over their shoulders or dragged along on wobbly aged wheels, it appears as though we have two new residents.


	3. The New Girl In Town

The sun has barely risen when I hear the panicked footsteps of my mother running up and down the stairs. I practically throw myself out of my bed and stumble into the hallway to see my mother carrying a bowl of hot water into my parents’ bedroom with as much haste as she can without spilling it. I make my way in afterwards to see my father as white as the bed sheets he’s laying on, his eyes drowsy and his forehead covered with beads of sweat. 

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” I ask my mother as she eases the bowl of hot water onto the bedside table. 

“shhh, try not to be too loud. Your father’s got a fever that’s all.” My mother talks so quietly I have to strain my ears to hear her. She dips a cloth into the hot water and dabs my father’s neck and chest with it. 

Now that I’m stood in the same room as the bowl of hot water my mother carried up from the kitchen I can smell the herbal remedy she’s created. It settles my nerves slightly, the smell makes me feel like a small child again whenever I was sick, it reminds me of the gentle touch of my mother. How she would hold me while I slept refusing to leave my side until I was better. 

My aunt Prim was the healer of the family according to my mother. My Grandmother is the official doctor, she trained after the war and works at a hospital in District 1 now. She makes the trip back to twelve once a year to see us all, it’s still all too painful for her. I overheard my parents discussing one of her visits once, apparently she’s nothing like she used to be. Always tense, like a spring that’s been wound too tightly. Another casualty of the war. 

We leave my father sleeping and go to the kitchen to start on making some soup which my mother hopes to feed to him once he wakes up. I peel onions quietly across the table from my mother who is chopping leftover squirrel meat, her eyebrows scrunched together and her lips pressed into a harsh line. She’s chopping the squirrel meat a bit too aggressively. 

“Are you alright, Mum?” she leans back on the chair letting the knife fall onto the chopping board as her hands land in her lap. She lets out a sigh and throws her head back and closes her eyes. It’s as if she needs my permission to fall apart. 

“Yes sweetie, I’ll be fine. I just don’t know how I’m going to leave your father for the day to open the bakery. Or if I should ask someone to run the bakery while I stay here, but then we’ll have to pay them a days wage and I don’t know if we can afford that…” 

“I can open the bakery,” she looks at me for a moment considering my offer, “Uncle Haymitch can help, we’ll be fine!” My mention of Uncle Haymitch doesn’t seem to convince her. 

“That’s too much to ask, what if something goes wrong?” she picks the knife back up and starts attacking the squirrel meat again.

“I’ll be fine! I’ve been helping dad at the bakery ever since I can remember!”

“But he’s always been there with you! It’s never been your responsibility!” Her manhandling of the squirrel meat is starting to make me wince. 

Against my better judgement I reach out quickly and place my hand on top of hers, the one that’s holding the knife. She stops immediately and looks up at me, her face all scrunched up with worry. 

“I’ll go and get dressed and run over to Uncle Haymitch’s to ask when he’ll be ready, ok?” She just nods. 

It’s strange to see her so out of control but I’ve figured out the common denominator. My father. It’s as if she can’t function without him. The slightest threat to him is enough to send her into becoming a person I don’t recognise. The worst part is that I know how much she hates it, she hates seeing me and Rye having to parent her, to hold her hand and tell her it’ll be ok. From Uncle Haymitch’s stories I know that she did too much of that for her own mother as a child. She resents herself for it and I know she’ll spend the next few weeks making it up to me once she’s back to being herself. 

I normally wear my hair in a braid, it’s the way my mother styled my hair for me ever since it was long enough to do so. She’s always reminded me of how easy and practical it is and with my first day running the bakery without my father I figure that I can’t get enough ease and practicality. Judging from the recent weather the bakery will be unbearably hot and so I pull on my pale green cotton dress. It buttons up down the front and has slender straps so it doesn’t hold in too much heat. 

I make my way over to Uncle Haymitch’s, he only lives a few doors down so I’m there within minutes knocking at his front door. The sun has just started to rise and the sky glows a warm orange colour. It takes a while for the door to be answered but when it does I’m in for a shock. 

“Oh! My darling girl! Don’t you look just wonderful! And so grown up!” Normally her Capitol accent grates on my ears but everything about this moment is too comical to care. Her hair sits like a wild birds nest on her head and the golden flecks clearly meant to be strategically placed on her eyelids have fallen down across her cheeks. 

“Oh hi Effie, it’s good to see you!” I have to press my lips together to stop from smirking. 

Haymitch stumbles around the corner in nothing but his underwear and a beanie, which isn’t unusual for Haymitch if Effie wasn’t stood in his doorway in nothing but one of his old shirts. 

“Well hello there little sweetheart, and what brings you to my door at the crack of dawn?” the annoyance in his voice doesn't go unnoticed by me despite the cheery tone he's using. 

“Dad has a fever and I told Mum I’d run the bakery today…with your help of course.” I smile sweetly at him although I know he’d never say no to me.

He sighs before agreeing and slinking off to get changed. Effie and I stand in silence for a moment before I think of something to say. 

“How long are you in town for this time, Effie?”

“Not long, dear. I’m catching the morning train back to the Capitol...I mean the City. It's so hard to get used to that no matter how many years its been! Lots to do, always busy busy busy!” she talks a lot with her hands but it doesn’t have the same effect when she’s not in her extravagant clothes. 

“Are you shooting another campaign here? I loved the last one! You really made twelve look glamorous!” This is how I know I’m good at lying, much better than either of my parents who are both too honest in very different ways. My mother is too brutal to lie and my father is too kind.

My honest opinion of Effie’s last campaign shoot that she chose twelve to be the backdrop of is that it made us look weak. Everyone in the Capitol loved it, of course they would, with their shallow expectations and their superiority complex. Her concept was to style her clothing line for the everyday person. She was marketing ease and practicality, much like my braid and breathable dress, yet her clothing line featured shoes made entirely out of buckles and dresses with trains so long you’d have to give the person wearing it a six foot wide-berth so as not to trip them up by standing on it. 

“Why thank you my dear. But, no. For this year’s campaign shoot me and my team are heading to District 10! It’s all leather you see so what better place to shoot than the home of livestock production!” She looks off into the distance as if seeing a vision. I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes at the theatrics and at her stupidity. 

“You know that’s not all District 10 does anymore, they have lots of different roles like all the Districts do.”  
“Yes, dear, well I know that but the older audiences will absolutely love the symbolism!” 

Thankfully Uncle Haymitch appears from the hallway fully dressed and ready to go so I don’t have to start a conversation with Effie about how offensive and insensitive her entire concept sounds. I say goodbye and turn to walk down the steps from the house but can hear the sound of them kissing and Uncle Haymitch tell Effie to stay out of trouble while he’s gone. I quicken my pace to get out of earshot. 

The heat has well and truly arrived by the time we reach the bakery. I busy myself whipping up some dough while Haymitch lingers around the front of the shop pretending to sweep the floors. I can tell it’s going to be a long day. 

About halfway through the day Effie clip clops into the shop in her ridiculous heels that are not at all suited to twelves uneven pathways. I’m surprised she hasn’t twisted an ankle on her way down here. She’s dressed head to toe in Effie-glamour as my parents like to call it. She informs us enthusiastically that my father is keeping his soup down and is already feeling much better. She must have been over to visit my parents once she realised I would tell them she was in town once I got home this evening. It’s not that I don’t like Effie, she’s just hard to swallow. She’s one of the only people I know who doesn’t seem at all effected by the war. And for someone so wrapped up in the Capitol elite I don’t know why she acts like her whole world didn't crumble during the revolution. Maybe that chirpy optimism of hers won’t allow her to see it that way. 

I carefully carry a tray of my father’s decorated cupcakes out to display in the window of the shop, luckily he made and decorated some yesterday. I haven’t quite mastered my father’s level of decoration skills yet and I wouldn’t want to imitate him and customers to think he’s lost his talent. Everyone in twelve loves to come and admire the cakes in the window. My father makes sure to charge as little as possible for them and sometimes he even gives them away for free, I think the memory of my mother and my aunt Prim pining for just a bite their entire childhood makes him soft. 

The bell on the door rings to let me know someone has entered the shop but I’m focused on transferring the cupcakes from the tray onto the little stands in the window so I don’t look up. Her scent wafts over me before I notice she’s there, lavender. 

“Wow, they’re just beautiful! I see what everyone has been talking about!” 

When I turn I’m greeted by a pair of bright green eyes that glint in the reflecting sunlight beaming in through the window. Her golden hair falls around her face as she leans down to get a closer look at the cupcakes. That’s when I realise that she’s the girl from the train that I saw on our way back from the lake a few days ago. 

“My-my father makes them…this is his bakery.” I stutter. I don’t know why I’m falling over my words so much. 

“Well everyone I’ve spoken to in twelve has told me I must visit! So here I am!”  
I stand up from the kneeling position I was in and she straightens up too. For a moment my senses feel overwhelmed, the smell of the lavender, the way the sunlight bounces off of her eyes and her hair, the musical quality in her voice. The bell on the door rings again grounding me and I make my way over to the desk.

Good. This is good. Put the desk between us. That’ll dull the overwhelming urge you have to reach out to this stranger. She follows me over and stands readily on the other side of the desk. She’s joined by the older woman I saw at the train station that night, the one about the same age as my mother. She looks as though she was once a very beautiful young woman but her blonde hair has turned more a shade of white and time has aged her face. 

“Would you like a cupcake, Mama? I think I have enough here?” She pulls out some coins from the pocket in her yellow dress, something else about her that makes her so captivating, and holds her hand out towards me across the counter. I count the coins quickly, steadying myself by gripping onto the edges of the counter to stop my hand from reaching out to hers to hold it still for my eyes. 

“Yes, that’s more than enough,” I glance up at her only quickly but when our eyes meet my heart starts beating so hard in my chest I’m worried she’ll be able to hear it, “Would you like to go over and choose some. I’ll get a box ready for you.”

“Oh don’t worry about it, we’ll eat them now! I couldn’t possibly carry them all the way back to the house without eating them!” Her laugh is like music to my ears and I can’t help but laugh with her. 

She goes over to the cupcakes in the window to make her choice while her mother orders a loaf of bread, I wrap it up for her and store the money in the cash register. Surprisingly her daughter still hasn’t chosen a cupcake, her mother tells her she’s going ahead to the next shop and that she should meet her in there once she’s decided. Once she’s gone, the girl calls me over to the window. I make myself walk slowly almost as if it’s an inconvenience for me. 

When I reach where she’s standing she takes my hand in hers and gently pulls me down into a crouching position again so our noses are right in line with all the cupcakes in the window. The warmth from her hands travels up through my arm and disperses across my body. I feel my cheeks flush with it. 

“Pick one for me.” She says it likes it’s a challenge but then I feel her eyes land on my face, watching me with an intense concentration as if I’m about to reveal some magic skill I have. 

I scan the cupcakes, I see her dilemma, they’re all exquisite. Then I notice one at the farthest point from me, hiding behind some bright orange creation my father has experimented with. I reach over and pluck it from its spot and present it to her.

“To match your dress.” I say. She looks down at the cupcake, a yellow dandelion carved from icing balancing gracefully on top of the cake. She takes it from my hand, our fingertips brushing past one another. 

“I love it.” It’s almost a whisper, meant only for me. 

“Willow! I need you help in here!” Uncle Haymitch’s yell from the kitchen breaks us away from each other and we both jump to our feet as the smell of burning fills the bakery. 

I begin towards the kitchen with a hurry, as I reach the door she calls out to me.

“But- I haven’t paid!”

“It’s on the house, don’t forget one for your mother too!” She grins at me and nods her head in thanks as I run through to the kitchen.

When I return to the desk, after teaching Uncle Haymitch a thing or two about time management when baking bread, she’s gone. I realise I forgot to ask her name, how long she’s staying, if she’ll even be returning to the bakery? My heart sinks, why am I so attached to this new girl in town? Out of the corner of my eye I notice a little stack of coins, enough to cover the price of two cupcakes. I pick it up and feel its weight in my hand. I get the feeling it means she’ll be back for more. I can’t help my lips from forming a smile.


End file.
